Monthly Archives: August 2016

As my regular readers ( both of them) will know, I have been out of work since being laid off in February. It was a crappy, pointless, boring job that didn’t even cover my costs, so to some extent I wasn’t too bothered, but the lack of money was a pain. Of course, after a couple of days recovering and catching up on sleep I began the slog of looking for another job. What? You thought I spent the entire time drinking cheap beer, playing video games and jerking off to online porn? No bloody way. I don’t drink cheap beer.

The modern job search has it’s advantages – there are plenty of websites that list huge numbers of jobs, resumes can be emailed, application forms can be autofilled and job descriptions copied and pasted into Word. It’s all a hell of a lot easier than looking through the paper and mailing out printed applications.

Despite all my effort, interviews were few and far between. I think that this may have been due to my somewhat unconventional employment history. You see, for many years I was a stay at home Dad, with a period of being a Realtor thrown in. Going to business school didn’t do me much good on the career front either, as most jobs for which I am qualified required three to five years of industry experience.

Do you know how frustrating it is to apply for a job which you know damn well you could do if just given the opportunity? It would turn the Dalai Lama into the Incredible Hulk in about a week.

The thing I disliked the most was the telephone interview. At the best of times it is difficult for me to judge how people are reacting ( see “I’m Coming Out”). On the phone this is impossible, so very few of these calls turned into in-person interviews. A couple did, however. One in particular seemed like a gift from on high. I was an Executive Assistant position for a commercial Realtor. The interview lasted a full hour, and we seemed to get on really well. She was a woman for whom it would have been a pleasure to work – funny, easy going, sharp as a needle. I had the exact skill set needed and felt really confident that I was in with a very good chance. When the call didn’t materialise on the Tuesday following the interview I knew it wasn’t to be. This was confirmed the following day when I got a call to say that I’d missed out by the narrowest of margins and that the other person had accepted the position.

I’m not a malicious person, but I found myself wishing physical harm on the person who beat me, so down was I about missing out on what was essentially my dream job. So, back to the grind it was. This went on for a few more weeks until I got another phone interview. I only found out about the job because it was forwarded to me by an agent at a placement agency who had trawled my resume from the online pool. I gave it my best shot, but didn’t get my hopes up. Surprisingly I was invited in for an interview with the woman who had talked with me over the phone and another person. This meant two 30 minute sessions, so as you can imagine, I was running on fumes by the time it was over.

I felt fairly confident, and even said so to my sweetie afterwards, but the score is Hope 0, Experience 6.8 million, so I didn’t think too much of it, especially as they said that they had some other people to interview and would be making a decision some time the following week (the interview was on a Thursday). Imagine my surprise on the following Monday morning when I learned via email that I’d been offered the job. Of course, I accepted on the spot. The next two days were a flurry of form filling, clothes sorting and housework as I prepared for my change of pace.

The downside of all this was that I had to drop out of our planned trip to San Francisco to celebrate my Sweetie’s birthday. A real disappointment, as you can imagine. She had to go on her own, but considering the circumstances, it was a price worth paying. Tomorrow is the big day. I jump back into the routine of the commute and the stress of learning a new job from scratch and proving that I can get up to speed quickly. I will admit to more than a little apprehension about the new job, as I will have to get to know a whole new set of coworkers and potential friends. Mind you, look on the downside – they have to get to know me!